paleface [sys=PS3; cat=Fighting; reg=JPN] |
| | PS2 Classics version, available for download on PS3 from the Japanese PSN, of this collection of three King of Fighters NeoGeo games: KOF '95, '96, and '97. (Followed by the "NESTS Compilation" of '99, 2000, and 2001--see entry 1341). In my old entry for the original, disc-based PS2 version of the game (see entry 1048), I said it was, as far as I could tell, a faithful port of the NeoGeo arcade games. Well, either the conversion to a PS2 Classics on PS3 title has had a negative effect on its performance, or I've become a little more critical since then, but anyway, there do seem to be problems in this version, and I can't really recommend buying it unless you're desperate for KOF '97 in any form on your PS3. (For '95 and '96, there are the excellent "NeoGeo Station" PS3 versions.) The control input feels really sluggish; it is very difficult to do a basic uppercut move, for instance. It's really quite bad. There are odd graphical quirks; I only messed around with the port of '97, but for instance the character heads on the high score list screen you see after a game are oddly squished down, and on the Continue screen, the big numbers counting the time down are almost completely transparent. Speaking of graphics, in the compilation's main menu you can toggle a smoothing, blurring anti-aliasing effect, but even without that, there is more blurring than a PS2 game needed to have. There *is* an option to have the games use the fully orchestrated, "Arranged" sountracks, which are very nice; unfortunately, '97 has a lot of stages that were designed (I double-checked this against a more accurate version) to have just ambient sound, without music, leaving them oddly silent even with the Arranged soundtrack selected. Maybe the least musical KOF, that '97! : P |
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| | A video of me thrashing around in various single-player modes of '97, and trying the different soundtrack options in an ignorant attempt to inject music into stages that weren't designed to have music playing in the first place:
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